The influence of managerial coaching on employee expertise: promoting work motivation as a mediator

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: The current organizational environment, extreme competition, and rapid change in the working environment have increased the motivation of researchers to identify important variables that can help organizations to be competitive to overcome these challenges. Therefore, this article examines how immediate superiors use different managerial coaching, namely guidance coaching and facilitate coaching, to regulate the practice and behavior of employees. In addition, this study examines workplace motivation medium as the mediator of the relationship between managerial coaching and employees’ expertise.METHODS: The cross-sectional research design was employed to collect data from 500 employees across various policy-making agencies in Malaysia. The sample size was determined using the Raosoft formula, and 473 employees were selected using this technique. SmartPLS software was used to evaluate the measurement and structural models. This software is capable of analyzing complex study models.FINDINGS: The results of mediating structural equation modeling show two findings. First, guidance indirectly relates to employees' expertise, mediated by workplace motivation (β=0.169; t=4.683; p=0.000). Second, facilitation coaching is indirectly associated with employees' expertise, mediated by workplace motivation (β=0.167; t=3.926; p=0.000). This finding reports that a leader's ability to demonstrate managerial coaching (e.g., guidance and facilitation coaching) can enhance an employee's expertise. Consequently, this positive situation can increase employees' expertise, including practicing good attitudes, adapting to tasks, and understanding the organization's objectives and tasks, within the studied organization.CONCLUSION: The findings have recognized that facilitating coaching is a crucial managerial problem organizations must solve. Therefore, for practical contribution, organizations should establish an effective selection system based on coaching instruments to recruit leaders who already have coaching ability externally and promote potential employees as coaches internally. Other than that, organizations can provide or support formal training and education programs to help leaders become effective coaches in the future.